French Friday Round Up

I hope to get caught up reading all of your blogs soon, but it does take time to read all those posts, bookmark the recipes and wipe the drool off my chin. There are so many post-holiday recipes that I can't wait to try! I thought that I would finish out this week with a round up of the French Friday's with Dorie December recipes. I made four of the five recipes this month.

First up were the Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts.

We love toasted and spiced nuts to snack on and these were delicious, flavored with chili powder and cinnamon for a sweet and spicy snack. I try to cut out sugar when I can so I made a version substituting splenda for the sugar and they were every bit as good as those with sugar.

Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts

Around my French table by Dorie Greenspan

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pinch cayenne

1 egg white

2 1/2 - 3 cups nuts almond, pecan, cashews

Preheat oven to 300 F.

Spay baking sheet with non stick spray or line with silpat.

Mix sugar, salt and spices together in a small bowl. Beat egg white lightly with a fork in a larger bowl. Toss in the nuts, stir to coat , than add the sugar and spice mixture and continue to stir until the nuts are evenly coated. Spread nuts on prepared baking sheet.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the nuts are browned and the coating is dry. Cool breaking apart as necessary.

Next up is the Leek and Potato soup

 

This was everything Dorie said, simple to make and full of wonderful flavor. We pureed half of the soup, so it was a combination of smooth and silky with rustic pieces of potatoes throughout.  The real treat in this photo is that crusty roll. It's from the Cook's Illustrated Holiday baking issue. I will do a post of this recipe very soon.

Now the Speculoos

I haven't had these cookies in years and for the life of me I can't think of a good reason for that. These crispy cinnamon treats were the perfect addition to our cookie boxes this Christmas.  I'm not sure why they have such a wrinkly appearance, but I probably didn't chill the dough long enough. Appearance aside, these cookies disappeared fast.

Finally the Beef Daube

You may have noticed that I don't have a photo for this fabulous recipe. I was behind schedule and no one wanted to wait for a photo shoot, including me.  I foolishly thought there would be left overs that I could shoot after dinner. My mistake. If you want to see what it looks like visit Kim over at Stirring the Pot , she has a great post on this recipe.  Suffice it to say this red wine beef stew is simple to make and has terrific flavor. All of the the December recipes are ones that I will be making again.